Lawmakers in Britain voted on Friday to allow assisted dying for terminally ill patients in England and Wales under strict conditions, opening the way to one of the most significant changes in the country in decades. After five hours of debate in the House of Commons, they voted by 330 to 275 to support a plan that would allow doctors to help patients with less than six months to live to end their lives.
The vote was not the final word on the legislation: It will now be scrutinised in parliamentary committees and amendments to the bill may be put forward. But it is a landmark political moment, setting the stage for a significant social shift that some have likened to Britain’s legalisation of abortion in 1967 and the abolition of the death penalty in 1969.
Assisted dying is legal in a handful of European countries, Canada, New Zealand, and in 10 US states and the District of Columbia. The decision in Westminster followed weeks of fraught, often emotional public debate in Britain on a complex ethical question that has transcended political affiliations and provoked sharp disagreement.
The bill that lawmakers approved on Friday would require two doctors and a judge to give their approval to any patient choosing to end their life, and fatal drugs would have to be self-administered.
It was proposed by a Labour Party member of parliament, Kim Leadbeater, but lawmakers were given the freedom to vote with their conscience.
Proponents of assisted dying see it as a merciful way to curtail unbearable suffering in the final months of life. But critics view it as a threat to the old, the disabled, and those with complex medical conditions whom, they argue, might be pressured into a premature death.
Leadbeater told parliament that her legislation addressed “one of the most significant issues of our time,” and asked colleagues to help families who face “the brutal and cruel reality of the status quo.”
Under current British law those who help relatives or friends to end their lives face police questioning and potentially prosecution. So even terminally ill Britons who decide to end their lives in countries with more permissive rules, like Switzerland, must do so alone to protect their families.
That consigns some to a terrible death, proponents of the bill asserted on Friday.
“The deathbed for far too many is a place of misery torture and degradation, a reign of blood and vomit and tears,” said Kit Malthouse, a Conservative Party supporter of the bill. “I see no compassion and beauty in that: only profound human suffering.” But Meg Hillier, a Labour lawmaker, said the legislation would “cross a Rubicon,” by involving the state in the death of some of those it governed. “This is a fundamental change in the relationship between the state and the citizen, and the patient and their doctor,” she said.